The Toll

Daisy & her cousin Claire live in a house called Hazelhurst, in the town of Staywater, somewhere in south Georgia. They're both in their 80's. One can hardly walk. The other can hardly see. They're raising Cameron who is 17. He has lived with them, since he was a toddler. His parents abandoned him. They dumped him on their doorstep. They could have called child services & he would have gone into the foster system. But, they chose to keep him. He has a crush on Jess; the only barmaid at the only bar in town.

Titus & Melanie are on their honeymoon. They're driving on State Road 177 thru swampland on their way to a cabin in the state park of Okefenokee. They come across an old stone bridge. It's narrow, with only a single lane. It doesn't look sturdy. Just outside the park, maybe half a mile, Titus wakes up lying on his back in the middle of the road. His SUV is about 50 feet behind him, with both driver & passenger doors hanging open. The keys are in the ignition. He stares at the spot where his wife ought to be. She isn't there. And, there's no sign of the bridge, either. He searches for her 2 miles in each direction. Then, he calls for help.

The officers impound his car & take him to the hospital in a neighboring town. He eventually ends up at Maude's (the only hotel in the dying town of Staywater where the residents are scant). Boomer, the tracking dog & his handler Betty, search for Melanie. Titus finds one of her sandals & one of her earrings.

Netta, the town nut, lost her son 13 years ago. She chases down Titus to tell him that his wife will never be found & no one will ever know what really happened to her. People go missing every 13 years. It's been happening forever. IT sets a trap to see who takes the bait. IT always catches somebody. IT rises up to feast. Then, IT goes back to wherever IT came from. And, reappears in 13 years.

I've loved Cherie Priest's writing for so long now that it's hard to remember a time when I wasn't curling up with one of her book. I'm not sure, however, whether I'll be picking this one up any time soon. Not because I didn't enjoy it, but because there really weren't too many surprises, and that despite a very promising set-up.

The ending/resolution felt way too rushed as well, almost as if Priest remembered there was something else she needed to be doing... so she went and did it.

That said, her depiction of the swamp, and small town life in the middle of the swamp, is excellent - Mayberry-by-the-Mud. She captures the local characters well, too, and the interactions between them and the desperate stranger who arrives in their midst is painted with just the right amount of suspicion/curiosity. But so much more could have been made of events that unfurl as the tale proceeds - the invasion of the outside media, for example. The plethora of ghosts who occupy the town. The dolls house!

The cause of the horror demanded more background than it's given; even if only to explain why its resolution felt so flip. So it's not a bad story. But if you've read Priest at her very best - The Clockwork Century, the first of the Borden books, The Family Plot, Those Who Went... the list goes on... this one just felt half-hearted and rushed.

I still enjoyed it, though!

Despite the towering to-be-read pile, Cherie Priest is must-buy, must-read. I can confirm I made the right choice. Gothic but also modern, horror but very little slime/spatter, relationships but no happily-ever-after promises.

As always, I love the way Priest handles language. The rhythm of the words gives the dialog a southern flavor without resorting to dialect. Little twists are woven in so that they surprise but do not distract. Descriptions of the town and swamp also flow beautifully, never taking me out of the story. I also like that not everything is explained, but can still be understood by inference - I will spend some time looking up haints!

If you like spooky, southern mystery / horror with lots of shades of gray, this will suit you fine.

State Route 177 runs along the Suwanee River from Fargo, Georgia to the Okefenokee swamp. Titus and Melanie Bell are newlyweds on their honeymoon trip to a rented cabin where they plan to do some canoeing in the swamp. According to the GPS map, there are six bridges along their route. But the Bells seem to have found a seventh, a one-way, rickety thing with stone support pillars. They can't get to their destination without crossing it, even though something seems off about it. They start to cross anyway, and several hours later, Titus wakes up lying in the road with no sign of Melanie anywhere. He enlists the help of the local police from the small, backward town of Staywater, but they insist there is no seventh bridge. Titus remains in Staywater, determined to find out what happened to his wife. He finds a town that seems stuck in an earlier time, with residents, particularly the two elderly sisters who live at the edge of town, who are not simple Southern folk. As Titus gets deeper into the mystery of Melanie's disappearance, he gets drawn into a haunted legend that returns every thirteen years to take its toll for crossing that seventh bridge.

This is Southern Gothic horror, and a fairly decent story. If the above sounds a bit like the troll under the bridge fairytale, it kind of is with a few twists. It isn't exceptionally graphic, but it is horror, so there are some moments that might be a bit much if you are not usually a horror reader. The atmosphere is creepy, from the murky swamp that hides too many dangers to the town of Staywater which is not just a small, low population backwater of a place but seems to be stuck in a past that haunts the town and anyone who arrives there. There are snippets of that creepiness scattered throughout: a house filled with dolls that are not quite alive but not quite simple dolls, an abandoned storefront with mannequins whose clothes change somehow, hints of magic and ghosts. The characters can seem a little thin, with no one point of view standing out. The closest we get is Cameron, the teenage ward of the elderly sisters who know more than they care to let on about the mysterious seventh bridge. But even he seems peripheral to the main story. The more interesting ones are Daisy and Claire, who have seen the thing in the swamp before and thought it was gone. As it turns out- well, no spoilers but the only way to fight a ghost is with a ghost.

The book is good, if a little slow especially at the beginning. But once it picks up, things roll along much more quickly, and the secrets of the town and its people (and why they stay in such a lost place) are revealed in layers that keep you reading. Yes, there is a good bit of horror here, but not the slasher movie type. It's more atmospheric and out of the side of your eye stuff. All in all, a decent read.

Did not hold my attention. Couldn’t finish the book. Found the plot to be very slow and none of the characters, except the witches were interesting to me.

Being from North Florida, I instantly understood the culture and set pieces of this novel. It was all wonderfully rendered.
Over all, it was an intriguing, captivating Southern Gothic mystery with a heavy Eldritch bend. I devoured this book!

Would recommend.

Newlyweds Titus and Melanie Bell are on their honeymoon and traveling along State Highway 177 across the Okefenokee Swamp and near the town of Staywater. They cross several trestle bridges as they head deeper into the swamp. Their conversation is a little stilted, a little awkward, the radio signal keeps cutting out, and the Bells (and the reader) ponder the benefits of honeymooning in the swamp. The road begins to narrow and the Bells approach another bridge. This bridge is not quite like the others, you can't see the end of it, the overhanging vines seem to swallow it, and something about it just feels wrong. Despite their reservations, the Bells proceed across it.

....Titus wakes up on the road some distance from the car, the car doors are open, the engine is running, and Melanie is nowhere to be seen. When local police arrive on the scene to take his statement and begin an investigation, Titus realizes that something is amiss. According to the maps of the swamp, there are six trestle brides that span the swamp, but the Bells crossed seven.

'The Toll' by Cherie Priest isn't a horror story, rather it's a dark tale with a hefty dose of Southern Gothic charm and witticism. There's ghosts, and swamp monsters, bog witches, southern superstition, and a decaying town. Staywater is just as haunted as the people who live there and they're accustomed to the particular 'weird' of their corner of the swamp. Once a thriving, industrial Southern town, by the time of Titus's arrival, Staywater has seen better days. There are spectral barflies, self-styling mannequins in '70s chic fashions in the main street boutiques, goofer lines, haint blue porch ceilings, and senior cousins Claire and Daisy living out their final years sitting crooked and talking straight with their godson, Cam, and their resident king snake, Freddie.

"You know I put my faith in a shotgun, any day of the week and twice on Sunday - but every girl with an ounce of granny magic knows it's true: Things from other worlds don't like iron."

'The Toll' was not the book I thought it was going to be. While not a horror story, I was absolutely drawn to the characters and the setting. There is a rhythm and dry humor to the story which makes up for the shifting POVs and the odd early pacing of the story. Let me explain, the whole plot hinges on Titus's need to discover what happened to Melanie. He is driven more by guilt than by actual love. However, we only see them as a couple for the first few pages of the story, and I wasn't invested in the fate of their relationship, or on solving what happened to Melanie. This is problematic. The emotional weight of the plot was severely lacking and Priest gambles on the reader's attention span. However, the gamble pays off if you stick with the story. You probably won't ever care about what happens to the fate of the Bells, but you will want to hear Claire and Daisy gossip about it.

Excellent mystery. Keep the lights on.

I read this book for the LOHF Ladies First 20 - it had been on my shelf for a bit, having arrived in one of the curated Nightworms packages. Cherie Priest is a new author to me, but I'm thrilled to discover she has a back catalog I can delve into. Priest is an excellent writer, with an eye for characters, pacing, and atmosphere. The setting of the swamp was well constructed, and the entire town of Staywater was an excellent creation. I wanted to know more about the Ladies, and those dolls? The mannequins? All the quirks and oddities that added a chilling and intriguing effect to the storyline. I would suggest not reading this one in the bathtub - I made that mistake and when a washcloth fell on my toe I about killed myself jumping out of the tub.

Scary, atmospheric, and a great story. Highly recommend.

The Toll has a modern setting with a southern gothic vibe. When one half of a couple disappears on the seventh of only six bridges, the lucky reader is introduced to Staywater, GA. The town looks like a sleepy, dying place on the surface, but here there be magic, witches, the supernatural, and a history of disappearances (and appearances). As always, Priest’s use of language sings a song of dread which will leave you creeped out enough that you want to keep on reading. The characters are alive and believable.